Antidotes: Overcoming Obstacles
HabitRPG is a self-monitored game that relies on the player wanting to make improvements in various aspects of their life situations. To play the game successfully and thus reap the benefits of HabitRPG, the player is required to accomplish their self-assigned tasks such as forming good habits and completing tasks. HabitRPG works under the premise that the player receives no advantage by misusing the game, as doing so would only sabotage their real-life progress. This is why there are no measures to prevent a player from repeatedly clicking a habit to receive pets or potions, or to level up their character when they are about to die. The following tips address the most common scenarios in which players feel tempted to bypass their own self-imposed tasks, and how they can overcome them. Character is near death When a player has many bad Habits or has not completed a lot of their Dailies for some period of time, the health of their character drops to a point where they will die if no action is taken. Many players become attached to their character's equipment and do not wish to lose it, but feel they are unable to complete enough tasks to level up, or do not have enough gold to buy a health potion to save their character. Hence, they might feel tempted to elude the loss by clicking habits or checking off tasks they have not actually completed. Remedies If the player performs enough tasks to either earn gold to buy a healing potion or level up. they can prevent death. The player achieves this more easily by: *Completing Dailies or To-Dos that can be finished before the day ends, particularly dark red dailies which provide the most experience points. *Thinking of, adding, and completing tasks that might have been forgotten on their To-Do list. *Completing good Habits that can be accomplished within a few hours. * Equipping any INT or PER boosting equipment the player may have (e.g., Mage equipment left over after changing classes) prior to completing any more tasks, or using skills to buff these attributes. *Avoiding bad habits. If this is still not quite enough to earn a healing potion, selling a few drops earned by previously performed tasks is preferable to checking off a task insincerely. Alternatively, it may be possible to evade death by healing with Healer skills. While healers have a self-heal spell, they also have a party heal. Beware, these spells heal a relatively small amount of health and one skill use may not provide enough health to prevent character death. Dealing with character death If these methods fail, the player can let their character die to learn the value of loss. When gold, levels, or items are lost, especially ones that the player is fond of, the player may gain more motivation to make sure the death does not occur again by planning and preparing for future days' activities. Greying out red Dailies which are due Players normally attempt this method of evasion when they have neglected their Dailies to the point that they cause more damage than the player can heal via leveling up or healing potions. The player might decide to pretend these Dailies do not exist by un-assigning them from all days of the week, and therefore not receiving any damage by not completing them. Remedies When a player begins to feel tempted to grey out their Dailies, it is usually a sign that they need to reassess their Daily task list (see Establishing Your Tasks). If players have numerous neglected Daily tasks, they can: *Use Fortify to reset all their orange, red, and dark red Dailies to yellow (note that this has a gem cost). *Rename their red tasks to something more achievable but relevant to the original task (e.g. rename "1 hr exercise" to "30 mins exercise"). *Use checklists in the Dailies to reduce the damage from a partially-completed Daily. *Join a challenge that centers around completing all tasks for a little motivation via competition. *Talk to a party or guild member about the Daily. Accountability is a huge reason why parties and, to a certain extent, guilds exist. Players are more likely to keep up a habit if other people are counting on them to do their Dailies. * Switch a particularly challenging Daily to a habit for a while, where missed days are not quite so damaging. It's easy to bite off more than one can chew, and working back up to a Daily can help a player feel less overwhelmed and succeed faster. Procrastination Procrastination is something many HabitRPG players experience. It occurs when a player consistently pushes off their tasks to complete at a later date, causing them to build up and resulting in a very long to-do list that seems impossible to reduce. This overwhelms the player and may cause them to give up or restart the whole game. 'Remedies' *'Improve your work environment.' People procrastinate more often when their work environment is uncomfortable, cluttered, loud, too bright, etc. Usually, something as simple as raising a desk chair or dimming the monitor can make a huge difference in the player's productivity. *'Use tags' to focus on fewer tasks each day and ensure that those tasks are done. This gives the illusion of a shorter and more achievable to-do list, making it less likely for the player to procrastinate on these items. *'Create deadlines' and implement them with tags. Humans have an uncanny ability to believe there are more than 24 hours in a day. Creating deadlines requires a reality check to realize how much time is actually available to complete the tasks. The most effective deadlines have a time and a date (e.g. I will finish _____ by Friday, 6:00 PM.) *'Prioritize tasks from easiest to hardest' and work on the tasks that are easy/fun first before looking at any of the other tasks. Even if the hardest tasks are not completed, the completion of at least one or two tasks is better than none. *Choose the most important To-Dos and make them Dailies. Losing health can serve as an impetus to push the player to work. Once completed, delete the Daily and check off the To-Do. (See Poisonous Dailies for more explanation.) *'Break down a major or difficult task into multiple parts.' This makes the task more manageable and less intimidating to complete. It also results in earning more gold and XP. Some ideas are splitting the task into time intervals or splitting the task into separate parts (e.g. splitting a 5000 word paper into 5 sets of 1000 words). Players can either create separate tasks for each part, or use the checklist feature to break down Dailies or To-Dos into multiple parts. Using checklists has the advantage of reducing the overall number of tasks, which otherwise might be overwhelming. *'Work for only two minutes'. The hardest part of overcoming procrastination is starting the work. After two minutes of working, a player will be able to assess how they feel and whether they believe they can continue working. If they do not believe they can continue, then they can take a break until they feel comfortable before repeating the two minute process. *'Take regular breaks' after periods of working to prevent burn out and improve focus. (See: Pomodoro Technique to learn how to work effectively in intervals.) *Once working, make sure to avoid anything distracting. A player can use the HabitRPG Chrome extension to prevent themselves from going on distracting websites. Cell phones and tablets should be turned off or put on silent. If the internet is not required for the task, turn it off. To make this process more pleasant, a player could create a separate Habit titled "Successfully removed all distractions." * Avoid rabbit trails. Even with external distractions removed, internal distractions can still be a problem. These can be either relevant (tangential ideas about the work you're doing) or irrelevant (ideas about other work, worries, fears, daydreaming, etc.) Keep a notepad handy and jot down any distracting ideas, then return to your work; that way you won't try to mentally juggle too many things at once. * Take regular rewards. Behavior that's rewarded is more likely to be repeated. Make your rewards small but relevant, and take them often. Make sure at least some are real world rewards, not just buying new gear for your avatar. Category:Gameplay Category:Tips and Tricks Category:Content Category:Mechanics Category:Scenarios Category:Methodologies Category:SuggestedChanges